Re: Energy Policy

AK: Ken Piers asked for some response to his energy policy, so I will
put in my two cents worth. Basically I agree with almost all of the
things he advocates. I also think the current energy bill should not be
passed by the Congress. Based on the amount of money it will cost
taxpayers, it seems like 80-90% of it will not help us greatly in the
future. My reading is that for a forward looking energy policy based on
realistic assumptions, it could be much better.

KP: Friends: A few days ago Walt challenged me to propose something in
the way of a
national energy policy instead of simply carping at the current proposal
that
was not taken up by the Senate. I think it is a good challenge and
wanted to
respond earlier but the end-of-semester time pressures have kept me
otherwise
occupied.
I also do not pretend to know the full contours of a healthy energy
policy,
nor do I know what is politically possible. Maybe something very similar
to
what is currently being proposed in Congress is the only politically
possible
policy at present.

AK: I am no political expert either, but everything that I see
indicates that we will radically change energy policy only when a crisis
hits or someone comes up with something cheaper. Speaking personally,
some of my students believe that there are easy, cheap alternatives to
oil that are being suppressed by oil companies who bought up the
patents. Whenever the gas prices rise more than the normal fluctuations,
the TV stations and the newspaper head to the nearest gas stations and
get the reactions of the public. About 8 or 9 out of 10 interviewed see
the problem as greedy oil companies just manipulating the market with no
concern that there might some day actually be a real supply problem.
Only a small minority advocate conservation and alternative fuels.
Since I became passionately involved in this issue, I have discussed
this question of oil gas depletion with dozens of people who I think are
mostly above average intelligence and the vast majority sort of shrug
their shoulders and say that it could not be as bad as I say it is or
the government would have told us. If it is not that, they feel that
technology will bail us out without much pain when supplies dwindle.
Nobody that I have ever run into thinks that you could ever get elected
to any public office based on an oil/gas depletion platform. So the
policy Ken proposes (or anything similar to it) has absolutely no
realistic chance for adoption today in my opinion.

I have looked high and low trying to find out out what justifies the
optimism of most people with regard to the world?s energy situation.
Obviously most people look at the experts and hear that the majority are
not worried, so they pick the side that they like, namely, don?t worry,
we will always have enough energy. (The same thing happens with
evolutionary theory-- people say there are Ph.D.?s who say evolution is
hogwash and others who say there is overwhelming evidence for it--so how
do I decide? The answer: You have to work it out yourself with a lot
of hard study, and most people don?t have the inclination and/or ability
to do that). So what is the optimists? answer? When the fossil fuels
get scarce and their price gets high enough, technological breakthroughs
will now become economical and will generate comparable replacements for
the fossil fuels. That may have a chance but it is by no means a sure
bet. Some people claim that gasoline is the near perfect fuel and
whatever we come up with will be almost for sure not be as efficient,
something I think may be close to the truth. Technological changes are
also likely to require long periods of time to be phased in. Thankfully
the supplies of fossil fuels will gradually decline as well so there may
be time to generate reasonable alternative to fossil fuels. The world
won?t have all that long to find out.

KP: But if I could have free reign to propose an energy policy, I would
propose
one that would take the nation in a somewhat different direction. I
believe
that we need to move in a direction that reduces our dependence of
fossil fuels
- both for supply reasons, in the cases of oil and natural gas, reasons
and for
environmental reasons , in the case of oil, natural gas, and coal.
So here are some of the things I would propose:
1. An increase in support for nuclear power, including support for the
development and construction of "inherently safe" nuclear reactor
designs; a
significant part of this support would need to be directed toward public

education.

AK: Nuclear fission power seems to be a known quantity that can provide
for electricity needs for decades. France gets 80% of its electric power
from nuclear and the US gets 7%. France did it with all their plants
all having the same design so that they would not have to troubleshoot
all kinds of different problems. We should have started building more
nuclear plants yesterday, but we haven?t started building a new one for
20 years. It will take an immense effort to overcome public perceptions
to use this source of energy, but I think it lies inthe future.

KP: 2. A significant increase in support for wind energy installations -
the
"renewable" technology that has the most going for it.

AK: From what I know it is cheap and competitive now. We should build
as many windmills as possible. The problems are that wind requires a
backup since it is not available on demand, plus the total power that
could be generated won?t come close to meeting the needs of everyone.

KP: 3. An increase in support for "hybrid" transportation vehicles -
(gasoline -
electrical)

AK: We have the Honda Civic and Toyota Prius on the roads now. If we
had the political impetus we could have had vehicles right now getting
an average of 40 miles per gallon. The political situation mentioned
above has ruled this out. We need a crisis to get most people driving a
hybrid and even then it will take a long time to switch the
infrastructure of the manufacturing process to build the hybrids and to
phase out the total gas vehicles present today.

KP: 4. Increased support for developing LNG facilities (I don't see how
we can get
along without natural gas for the foreseeable future) and domestic
supplies of
NG are not promising.

AK: From what I read this is the area that is likely to appear as the
crisis that alerts the US public to fossil fuel depletion. Even 5 years
ago the going opinion was that natural gas reserves were immense. So
power companies started building gas-fired generating plants. Today it
seems like we are on the verge of being unable to sustain current levels
of natural gas production in North America. Two proposed power plants
were canceled here in West Michigan, but the companies who have built
these new plants elsewhere want to keep them in operation so they need
the gas. The last talks presented on his web site by Matthew Simmons,
CEO of the oil investment bank, Simmons and Company International at

http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches

claim that we will be lucky to get through the next two years without a
shortage. It depends on how cold the winters are and how much air
conditioning is needed in the summer. Soon according to predictions,
North America will not be able to produce the natural gas it uses, so we
will have to import it. This is a lot harder for LNG than oil. We need
to build more terminals for liquid natural gas which supposedly cost 5-8
billion apiece. People don?t like them around their cities either so it
will have to be shoved down someone?s throat like the last facility in
Maryland. Plus the cost of building the tankers that need to transport
the liquid natural gas at -260 Fahrenheit is not cheap.

The energy bill has funds for building a natural gas pipeline from
Alaska to the lower 48 to get the gas from Alaska?s Prudhoe Bay where
the gas currently is being reinjected into the ground. There is a debate
about whether that pipeline should be built through as much of Alaska as
possible or through more of Canada because it should be cheaper. Guess
what the Alaskan delegation is demanding? Also Canada is building a
pipeline to their gas and oil source in the MacKenzie Delta in the
arctic. Should there be two pipelines or one? This pipeline will
supposedly supply about 2% of the US needs when it is in operation.

   
KP: 5. Increased support for "clean coal" (if that is not an oxymoron)
research
programs which would need to include CO2 sequestration technologies.

AK: We supposedly have substantial supplies of coal so this seems like a
good idea. But if the price of oil goes up, the price of coal will go up
as well since the machinery for mining it runs on oil and the transport
today depends on cheap oil. Furthermore the cost of mining the coal
will increase as the latter sources are not as easily mined as the first
mined areas.

 
KP: 6. Increased support for the development of an "all electrical"
transport
vehicle (assuming the electrical energy is supplied by nuclear or
renewable
primary sources).

AK: I have not researched this area much at all. How viable are such
vehicles for the average public? Obviously we have them already on a
small scale.

KP: 7. ?Support for research into and development of biomass fuels (but
probably
not corn to ethanol) - maybe switchgrass-based production or
fast-growing
tree-based (poplar, willow) production using lands that are now idle or
of
marginal quality for agriculture. (I think at best this could contribute
only a
very modest amount to our energy future).

AK: This is what I am supposed to know something about as a biologist.
What I would propose is that we start switching our biological efforts
from the immense NIH (health) research to biological sources of energy.
Plants, some protists and bacteria are experts in taking light, carbon
dioxide and water and converting them to hydrocarbons and oxygen.
Instead of sequencing all the health related genomes, the sequencers
could be turned loose on sequencing such bacteria, protists, and plants.
It would still be valuable to the evolution studies as well. The
cloners could get into the act as well and try to develop and improve
the hydrocarbon and hydrogen producing systems of these organisms or
genetically engineer their own. This would not take much more
retraining and the funds would already be available, they just would
have to shifted into a new area.

KP:8. Increased support for basic energy research and engineering
9. Continuing support for solar photo-voltaic research

AK: Again we could divert current funds from government progams like
NASA and such projects (Do we really want to go to the moon again?) and
use the same engineers and scientists to work on energy questions with
the money switched from other government projects that are not as
important.

KP:10. Increased support for conservation measures which might include
any or all
of the following.
a. Raising fuel efficiency standards for private and commercial vehicles

b. Support for commercial and home energy conservation ( installation of

insulation, efficient lighting, efficient heating and cooling systems,
efficient appliances)
c. support for inter- and intra-urban rapid transit systems.
d. Support for development of high-speed passenger rail systems.
e. Introduction of a carbon-tax on fossil fuels based on energy
generated/unit
mass of Carbon produced. This tax would be off-set by reduction of other
taxes
(income, excise) and would contain a circuit-breaker provision for low
income
persons.

AK: You get no quarrel from me on these proposals, but good luck trying
to get such policies through the US Congress.

KP:
Things I would not support (although some of these are probably
politically
necessary)
1. Increased tax subsidies for further oil, gas, and coal exploration
and
extraction

AK: This is, of course, what the current energy bill is largely about.
I do not support these either, but we are in the minority Ken.

KP:2. Increased subsidies for hydrogen fuel-cell technologies. Unless we
solve
the hydrogen generation problems without relying on fossil fuels, I see
very
little positive in a hydrogen based energy system. And even if somehow
we could
electrolyze water cost-effectively (say using nuclear or renewable
energy
systems) we probably would be better off simply using the electrical
energy
directly to power an electrical vehicle, rather than producing hydrogen
gas
with all of its attendant problems of safe transport and storage,
distribution
network, ?and so forth.

AK: I probably disagree the most with this. From the little bit I know,
I think that hydrogen systems produce the most power for mobile systems.
(Anybody know if I am wrong). I have heard that a plane could be
designed to fly on hydrogen power, but not on electrical batteries. For
that reason, one might want to continue such work in this area.

KP:3. Proposals to open ANWR for oil exploration and extraction. ??

AK: There is little doubt that if oil and gas supplies actually do
decrease, the US will drill and produce oil from ANWR. However, ANWR
probably has only about a year?s supply of US oil, if it could be
removed all at one time so it is not that big of a deal for oil
supplies. I certainly would not open it before everyone was convinced
that oil supplies were on a permanent decline and we would use it
accordingly.
Received on Fri Dec 12 17:07:32 2003